The Big Weekend – part I

So, we had a great rehearsal Friday night (and recorded it for a possible “live in the studio” release) and were all prepped and ready… Saturday, Greg and I showed up at Hames Music Store around noon to start the set-up process. Hames’ manager Rob told Greg he could use the store’s nice Yamaha drum kit – so Greg got busy setting it up as I re-wired the store’s P.A. to run in stereo.

Since we were performing again with a reduced lineup it was necessary to sync up to pre-recorded backing tracks to fill in some of the missing layers. Greg fed the signal from his iPod to the mixer and I blended that with my guitar feed and set the monitors accordingly. Jason rolled in around 1:30 and we ran through a little bit of a song to make sure we could all hear what we needed to, then put our instruments down to greet those coming in to watch. Not a whole lot of people showed (typical Florence!) – but it was nice to see familiar faces such as Larry Miller, Rodney Weaver and his daughter Bella, Daniel Evans from King’s Last Shot, Kevin Singleton, Cindy Lesesne, Billie Mozingo, and of course my brother Gavin from BGS Video who had the cameras rollin…

The time came to do our thing and I started with a little intro chord swell piece which bled into the song “88″ from my album Crux. As the last notes faded we began to talk about what it was that we were actually doing there… between songs we dialogued on subjects ranging from our individual musical influnces, why I choose to write instrumental music, the way different emotions are evoked with musical motifs, the art of improvisation, specific skill sets (such as Greg’s superb ability to sync to a metronome and Jason’s penchant for playing exactly what suits the song), etc.

As expected, my dawg Greg performed amazingly. He is such a solid and consistent player which is so helpful to someone like me. I tend to get a bit overwhelmed trying to wear a bunch of hats (guitarist, MC, soundman, etc.) and really have to concentrate to pull the songs off, so having Greg hold it all together is a necessity. He manages to lock in with the click but make it feel smooth and natural. His sense of groove makes even my odd-meter tunes seem to flow and feel organic. And during the Q&A he saved the day a couple of times with some “conversation starters” that moved the stalled dialogue forward. Don’t tell him, but I really don’t think i could have pulled this off without him…

The new guy this time around was none other than my old friend Jason Ridenhour. Jason and I go way back… we were in a band together almost 20 years ago (Scapegoat!) and I have been friends with his family since grade school so having him around just felt so comfortable. He is one of those rare individuals whom I believe underestimates just how talented he really is. His tone, note-choice, and feel are world class and his level of preparedness was startling – he pretty much had everything together when he walked in the door for rehearsal. When it came time to perform he just knocked it out of the park with in-the-pocket performances of my original songs and an inspired take on Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon” – complete with a tasty bass solo. He also fielded questions like a pro with educated responses about gear, his bass heros, musical inspiration.

We closed out the clinic with “Grace” and phase one was complete… but we had only just begun